October 6, 2012
After a very restless, almost sleepless night, I woke up around 8:00 AM. I exited my van and walked into the cultural center for breakfast. Betsy joined me a few minutes later. At 8:45 AM, Betsy and I drove down to the field to meet Ahote, Tuwa, and everyone else brought in to help with the harvest. It was a beautiful autumn morning.
While Betsy and I drove to the field, the conversation I had with Ahote and Tuwa the night before kept running through my mind. Once we arrived at the field, Betsy and I greeted Ahote, Tuwa, and the others. The men were given baskets and sent out into the field to gather corn.
Ahote’s Son. Image Not For Sale or Redistribution
while the women gathered in one place and shucked the corn harvested by the men.
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Not to be outdone, Ahote had the largest basket of all the men.
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As I walked through the field gathering corn, I stopped periodically to take photographs.
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Once again, I was blown away by the size of each ear of corn. I especially liked the blue corn.
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I noticed that when the sun hit the kernels of the blue corn just right, they looked like dark blue stones or pearls. They were magnificent.
After gathering several corn baskets, I took a break to perform my next Kabbalah meditation. Between 10:55 and 11:15 AM, I walked over to a clearing in the field, sat down in my private spot, and invoked the “Dispelling Anger” angel.
Halfway through my meditation, I saw a poisonous Water Carrier Blister Beetle.
Beetle offers the following message:
- Death/rebirth,
- past lives,
- connection to the center of the Universe,
- and enlightenment.
I thought the message from the Beetle was interesting since Hopi was also known as “The Center of the Universe.” After I completed my meditation, I rejoined the group and was invited to share some fresh Hopi watermelon, which was very tasty.
MY FRIENDS!
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While walking through the field, Ahote told me about remote viewing and astral projection. He said he would show me how to do it if I were interested. That’s when it dawned on me that my dream wasn’t about Ahote standing in his sleep; it was about him going into deep meditation to do remote viewing. This dream made me wonder if he watched over me the night before while I was in my van.
Then, out of nowhere, Ahote asked me if I would be interested in returning to Hopi in early November to go with him and his sons on a hunting trip. He said he wanted me to take photographs of the entire ceremony, from beginning to end. He also told me that the hunt was not for the faint of heart and that it would be a difficult challenge. While I felt completely honored to have been invited to participate in a real Hopi hunting ceremony, I also felt somewhat intimidated. I had never been hunting in my entire life. I didn’t know what to say. I just stood there in complete shock and awe.
Noticing that I was utterly speechless, Ahote and I rejoined the women. That’s when I took the following photograph of some corn in the back of Ahote’s truck. I loved this photo.
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While I was taking photographs, Ahote began sharing another one of his stories. He told everyone that their corn measured a Hopi’s wealth. If that was indeed the case, Ahote and Tuwa were extremely, extremely wealthy. They had so much corn in their fields that it wouldn’t be able to be harvested for three or four more months.
After soaking in Ahote’s story, Betsy and I decided we needed to escape the sun. We returned to the Cultural Center and spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening exploring different parts of Hopi and the surrounding area. That evening, we all gathered in the Cultural Center for dinner. Then, we returned to Betsy’s hotel room to pick and choose the photographs that would eventually go into Ahote and Tuwa’s final book.
After we went through the photographs, Ahote and Tuwa went home. I took a quick shower and then went to bed in the back of my van. I could only think about Ahote’s invitation to join him and his sons on their family hunting trip.
I now had so much to consider. I not only had to take into consideration my living situation and the fact that Ricardo was leaving Arizona at the end of the month, but I also had to consider the fact that I was low on money and the tread on my van’s tires was getting very thin. Even more so, I had to ask myself if I could honestly participate in a three—or four-day hunt in the dead cold of winter.
As all these thoughts rushed, I slowly drifted off to sleep. I concluded that regardless of what took place in the future, I was delighted and grateful with how everything had turned out so far.